


The Merits of Incorrectness

by Dark Witch the Injection Fairy Lily (The_INTJ_Sagittarius_Scorpio_Gryffindork)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Original Character(s), Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, POV Original Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 12:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10853631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_INTJ_Sagittarius_Scorpio_Gryffindork/pseuds/Dark%20Witch%20the%20Injection%20Fairy%20Lily
Summary: A shy young artist grows into a teenager in our modern world, and then she is accidentally plunged into a 1910’s world full of mad scientists who call themselves alchemists. The eerie gate portal she went through left her with a soul related gift that seems to interest two peculiar brothers. Spiritual art collides with scientific alchemy as one girl tries to find her way home. 2003 verse. Ed x OC.





	1. Part One - Belonging and the Deserved

**Author's Note:**

> I was interested by the idea of writing an OC FMA story in which I attempted to make the OC more than a Mary Sue, a self insert, or a manic pixie dream girl. She will hopefully be more complex and interesting than that. Her powers are limited and she is not perfect. 
> 
> I was also fascinated by the idea of creating a character in the FMA storyline whose powers and abilities were non-scientific and intangible, but forcibly noticeable. I liked the idea of Edward being attracted to something it was hard to understand and quantify, and I liked the idea of an entirely intuitive OC being thrown with strange powers into the middle of those who prize logic and rationality for a living. She doesn’t understand scientific logic and she can’t do alchemy but she has soul related abilities, she is an artist among scientists, she is shy in a world of big personalities - I loved the idea of dichotomy.
> 
> Hence, this story was born.
> 
> This story will be divided into two parts, and the first part will cover my OC’s life before encountering the gate. I wanted to build her up into a solid, independent character first. Enjoy the first part as an original little novella, I suppose. It should hopefully be interesting. Complex family interactions abound, and teenage drama that will make you glad you’re no longer in high school should surface. The unusual art school she goes to is one I first invented for a Harry Potter fic on an old Ao3 alias of mine, and I’m a little obsessed with it. I made a few tweaks in hindsight.
> 
> Then she’s plunged accidentally through the gate, mindfucked with a very particular strange power no one else has, and the 2003 FMA part begins! Yay! Have fun; it’ll be a wild ride!
> 
> P.S. This is my first FMA fic. Please don’t hurt me. Kindness is appreciated. I am just trying to do a much-beloved series justice.

_Imagination comes first in both artistic and scientific creations, but in science there is only one answer and that has to be correct._

_\- James Watson_

_This is what I think art is and what I demand of it: that it pull everyone in, that it show one person another’s most intimate thoughts and feelings, that it throw open the window of the soul._

_\- Felix Mendelssohn_

**Part One: First Life**

**Chapter One: Belonging and the Deserved**

Every afternoon, as soon as school ended, I bicycled to the hospital to see my mother. 

I would hop on my bike, tiny backpack strapped to my back and skirt around my knees, and the wheels would skim from my school, across black pavement and neat white concrete sidewalks, bouncing slightly, to the hospital. I trailed across the sprawling suburb, those neat rows of square, boxy white houses in full residential neighborhoods that all looked the same, started in the 1950’s after all the soldiers from World War II wanted homes. Each and every single one was part of the same homeowner’s association my own family was a part of, requiring us to pay a monthly fee for the upkeep of lamp posts, sidewalks, and paved streets, and requiring us to keep all of our front lawns the same flat and perfect green that were the front gardens I passed on my way to the hospital.

Like all suburbs, mine was part of a city, but not really. I had never visited there, never had a taste of city life. I was safely ensconced in the kid’s lemonade stand style neighborhood my father had been able to afford us as a lawyer. He was a logical man. “Make however many jokes you want about lawyers,” he would say in his thick German accent, “but my family is paid for.”

He took great pride in that - paying for us. In those ways, the ways that mattered to him, he was a good father. He was a good lawyer, too. He stayed late working every night, came home after dinner, hugged and kissed us, and retreated to his study before bed. He expected good things from us, and paid attention when we did badly.

I do not hate my father. He tried. It was just how he was. Before she got sick, he and my mother used to fight a lot, the shouted words rattling through the floorboards to my bedroom upstairs, where I curled up under the covers and winced as I listened. Giselle was not born until I was seven, just before Mother got sick, so for most of that time it was just me.

“You know nothing of love! You care, but you do not love!” My mother, who had always been a temperamental and passionate woman, said the worst thing she could think of. And my father, who normally never spoke during these tirades, suddenly shouted something back at her in German, my parents’ native language that I didn’t understand, something so harsh and so horrible it shut them both up.

I don’t know why I remember that particular moment. I think I remember it because of how scary it was. Parents were supposed to love each other, even parents as different as my Mother and Father, the very definition of hot and cold coming into contact.

Then Mother got sick. It was lung cancer, tumors growing inside the things that were supposed to provide her oxygen. Giselle was six months old when Mother was diagnosed. Mother still cared for her for a long time, but then she went under radiation treatment for the cancer - they were attempting to destroy all the cells holding the cancer, but unfortunately that meant destroying all the good cells too. Essentially, they were killing her in concentrated doses, hoping something would work. She lost all her hair, her skin became dry and flaky and pale, she had random bouts of diarrhea, she could barely keep any food down. Mostly, though, she became weak. She was constantly hooked up through tubes in the nostrils to a machine she carried around with her that was supposed to give her air. 

Father suddenly became there for us, defying all the stereotypes. He took tender care of Mother while she was sick, looked after myself and Giselle, and for a while I entertained the delusion that my mother would pull through and this cancer sickness would just bring us all together as a family.

If it had, this would be one of thousands of cancer essays. It wouldn’t be this story.

Mother didn’t get better. She took to the wheelchair, and then the hospital. My father, tears in his eyes, had to carry her into the car as she struggled feebly. “I don’t want to go to the fucking hospital! They’ll never let me leave!”

Father drove her to the hospital anyway.

And now every day after school, I visited her in her hospital bed. I wheeled up to the hospital, set my bike in the bike rack, and scampered up the steps and past the Grecian columns I’d always felt were too grand for a plain old city suburb hospital. The hospital was blindingly white and made of tile and it smelled like sickness and disinfectant. I ran up to the front desk.

“Adrienne Otto?” I said.

“Room 236,” said the secretary.

It had been three and a half years since my mother’s diagnosis. Giselle was four years old, at a daycare right now with some big lady pretending to be a cross between a preschool teacher and a mother for a bunch of toddlers. Gender equality and both parents working had been the advent of that invention. We could invent childcare systems but not cures for diseases.

I was eleven.

I hurried down the hall, past nurses and gurneys, up the stairs and into the room labeled 236. I knocked and peeked around the doorframe tentatively. My mother had a smile for me from her bed - she always had a smile for me - but it was wan. She looked thinner and paler by the day, like she was wasting away, and each gasp of her lungs sounded like a death rattle.

She was not passionate anymore. It was like the passion had been drained out of her. My mother had been a chain smoker. They said that was what caused the cancer, all the smoking in between her shifts as a waitress. I had promised myself I would never smoke.

I crept up to the bed and peeked my head above it. “Ana,” she croaked softly, with one of her weak smiles, putting a hand on my head of short dark hair. All of the bones and veins were in clear detail on that thin, bluish-white hand. Needles had been slid into it, hooked up to beeping medical machines.

My mother was the only one allowed to call me Ana. My full name was Annelise Otto, pronounced with an “ah” at the end, and everyone else called me Annelise. But my mother preferred the simple, German Ana. She missed Germany sometimes, I think, always making hearty meat-and-potato dinners when she was still healthy. She and Father had always fought about teaching me the language. Mother wanted me to know my ancestry; Father wanted me to forget it.

“It would only hold her back,” he said. “We’re in America now. She must focus on that.”

“It is important that she know her origins!” my mother argued.

Father won. Father always won.

“Mother,” I said conscientiously. “How are you?”

She gave me a fond look. “Do you know, Ana,” she said in her hoarse voice, “you are the only person ever to ask me that anymore.”

“Not even Father asks you?” I said indignantly.

“Father already knows.”

I crossed my arms and scowled. “Well it’s still polite to ask.” 

Mother chuckled, a surprised laugh barking out of her. “I suppose,” she admitted.

“Mother…” I said tentatively. “Do you hate Father? I mean, did you ever love him?”

Mother looked surprised. “What brought that question on?”

“I just - I always wanted to know -” Tears filled my eyes and I suddenly looked down, fists clenched, trying to hold them back. “It never looked like it, especially when the two of you would have one of your big glaring silences, and I always wanted to know, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get the chance to ask you again, and -”

“Ana, Ana,” my mother crooned, putting a cool, soothing hand to my cheek.

“No!” I scrunched my eyes shut but two traitor tears slipped down my face. I had never been good at holding back my emotions, no matter how badly I wanted to be. “You’re the sick one; I should be comforting you, and -!”

“Ana. It’s okay.” For a moment it was the firm old mother again. I looked up into her blue eyes - the eyes that looked exactly like mine. There was strength still in them, if nowhere else. “Yes, I loved your father. You’ll understand when you really fall in love with someone, Ana - you always love them, even when you don’t want to. It never stops. 

“And do not worry. Soon I will be well, and home again.” Another of her wan smiles.

I perked up, wanting to believe it. I’d been thinking a lot about the future lately, about what life without mother would be like - I tried to plan for death just as firmly as I planned for homework - and it troubled me that I hadn’t been able to picture life without mother. The image of her coming home comforted me. “Giselle has to get to know you,” I mandated. “She asked me the other day who you were. I shouted really loud,” I admitted shamefully, guilt curling within me.

“Oh, Ana!” my mother scolded, as fiercely as she could, which was still fairly gently.

“I know. It was bad. Giselle started crying and Father yelled at me. He’s scary when he shouts.” I looked at my toes, feeling utterly horrible. I’d felt it as soon as I’d shouted, and had the guilty need to somehow confess to my mother.

“You are usually so quiet, Ana, but you remind me so often that still waters run the deepest,” said my mother sadly. “It is okay. I will be home soon, and then I will raise you and Giselle.”

I wanted to believe it - so badly that on the surface I did. But I was not like my mother. My mother was a fun, free spirited optimist. She used to love taking me on car ride adventures to other towns and waving her hands around as she told me wild, fantastical stories. She’d been a chatterer, a short tempered one. I think my father liked her because he never said anything - he was just the opposite.

So it was just like mother, and deep down I knew it was just like mother, to say she was going to make it home even though everybody knew she was not.

“I love you,” I told her, with as much feeling as I could, as if I were trying to invest the rest of my life into the three words. My eyes burned again and I hated it.

“I love you, too. You have a way with people, Ana - you are quiet, but you have a good, warm heart. Look after the others, will you?” she asked me tiredly, already falling asleep from the brief conversation, her eyelids fluttering.

And I said I would. I failed pretty miserably on that account.

-

I was sitting on my bed reading a book by lamp light, the shadows from the bedside dresser trailing across my patterned comforter, one night when the news came.

Father came into the room, looking exhausted. His eyes were strangely empty, like someone had just pulled the cord and clicked the lights off inside them. “Mother is gone,” he said. 

I felt something inside me freeze. “She’s died?” I asked in dread. I’d been preparing for it for months, but somehow hearing it was different.

Slowly, he nodded, leaning against the doorframe as if it would hold him up.

And suddenly I was furious - with the whole situation, with him and how pathetic he was, and with little Giselle on the bed across from me, who spoke next. “Who’s Mother?” she asked in a high little voice.

I shot to my feet, eyes burning. I was always emotional and I never wanted to be. “Don’t you understand?!” I shrieked. “She’s the woman who gave birth to you and she was supposed to raise you and now she’s dead!” I shrieked the last word and it hung there hovering in the air.

Giselle began crying. I stormed out of the bedroom, past Father - who had not said anything, nor had he moved - and into the bathroom, where I slammed the door shut. I curled up in the bathtub, drew the curtain so no one could see me, and I cried as silently as I could, great gasps coming out of me in spite of myself.

I didn’t want anyone to see this terrible show of weakness.

-

On the day of mother’s funeral, I decided that funerals were stupid.

Really, it was incredibly dumb. Everyone came in black and sat down in rows in a big quiet grassy cemetery with a tranquil pond, and it was totally silent, and people came up to make speeches, and all of them were about how great mother would have been, and none of them were really about mother at all. The real mother would have laughed at all the grandiosity, hearing these people talk about her like she was some magnificent saint. The real mother would have hated the silence; she was always dancing around as she dusted in the living room, singing and playing music. I say the real mother - I mean the Mother I chose to remember, with her messy bun of greying red hair and her laugh lines.

Father sat on one side of me, rigid and unmoving and unemotional. Well, openly. The moments when he showed nothing - those, I knew, were the hardest for him. Giselle sat on the other side of me, squirming in her seat. I played little hand games with her to keep her occupied so she didn’t disturb the stupid funeral.

Giselle had red hair like mother’s. I would have to be very sure to tell her that. I was like father, all pale and solemn and angular, though he was pale blond. I’d gotten my black hair from a grandfather.

Finally, everyone got up and left, to mingle amongst the graves and murmur to each other. This, I thought, was the stupidest part of the funeral so far. What were all these people doing, talking like they hadn’t just lowered my mother’s coffin slowly into a hole in the ground so the maggots could eat away at her body? I felt nauseous at this image - I’d been having nightmares about it for days - and so I stubbornly refused to move from my seat.

Perhaps talking made them feel better. For some reason. I tried to focus on that.

I had my arms crossed, shoulders hunched, sheets of chin length black hair defensively hiding my face which was set in a scowl. So solemn, pale, and in black, I must have looked like Wednesday Addams from that old show I used to watch with my mother. No wonder no one approached me.

Remembering watching Wednesday Addams made me think of mother, of fun times having snacks, brushing each other’s hair, and watching the television with her, and it just made me sadder. Giselle would never have those memories, I realized. I would have to try to fill in for her, take care of Father and Giselle like Mother had asked me to, no matter how daunting an idea that was.

Finally, an uncle came up to me, a brother of my mother’s, big and hulking and smiling far too brightly for the occasion. My physical and mental defenses went up further. I wished he’d just stayed away. I glared up at him through all my hair.

“You know, Annelise,” he said cheerfully, “out of all of us, I think your mother loved you the most. She was very fond of you. You were her favorite.”

Something flared within me - something painful which quickly turned to anger. “My mother didn’t favor anyone! She loved everyone equally!” I yelled, storming to my feet, and the whole funeral party paused to stare at me in surprise.

I stalked away from my uncle and to the car, on pins and needles.

-

I tried to heed my mother’s words over the following months, and care for my family. But nothing went right.

I could never comfort Giselle’s tantrums, the way mother would have. I tried to talk gently above her, and she only shouted and kicked and flailed more. I tried to offer her toys and food and act bright and happy, but all she ever seemed to be was annoyed with me.

I tried to cook dinners for father and ask about his work, but father rarely spoke these days and he always ignored the food I left out on the counter - not that it was much to look at anyway. It was always horribly burnt.

No way around it, I was not a good mother. I tried cleaning the living room once, the way mother used to. My arm and leg muscles were sore and exhausted and it took me an entire day and by the end I still wasn’t finished. Mother not only kept the house clean, but decorated it in bright colors and eclectic dangling shells and rustic furnishings.

Whenever I felt like crying, I tried to picture Mother. She wouldn’t cry in this situation. She was always brave.

And I thought we were getting along fine, until father finally spoke over a stiflingly silent burnt dinner at the kitchen table one night. “Annelise, your grades have been dropping.”

I lowered my head, ashamed. I had always expected more from myself than I was able to give. I did not feel I was very intelligent. But I’d been doing even worse than usual lately, and it just piled on more stress.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

He sighed. “It’s not your fault,” he admitted. “It’s mine.”

“Father -!” I began, impassioned, but he waved a hand and as I always did, I fell silent. I always tried to get along with everyone. Maybe I shouldn’t have that time. Maybe if I hadn’t kept silent for the good of the peace, things would have turned out differently.

Instead, I became timid.

“This is not working,” he said in a tone of distinct frustration. “I have come to a decision. Giselle will be living with Uncle Wilhelm for a while.”

“... What about me?” I asked tentatively. “I have to go with Giselle. I know her best!”

He shook his head. “You are old enough,” he said. “You will go away to school.”

“I do go to school,” I said, confused.

“Boarding school,” my father clarified. “You will live somewhere else.”

“But… then you’ll be all alone,” I said softly, feeling desperately sorry for him. My Father I think had lost all hope after failing my Mother. In this, we were alike.

“Maybe… maybe that’s best.” It took effort, I could tell, for him to say this - one of the few occasions when I could see right through him.

“Will Giselle be okay with Uncle Wilhelm?” I asked tentatively.

“Better than she would be with me,” he answered honestly. Giselle was making a castle out of her peas, oblivious to it all.

I knew Uncle Wilhelm. He was my father’s younger twin brother. He was a good person, very fatherly, a warm figure who had a wife and a son, a son older than me who would make for a good big brother. It was a perfect picture. But I had no place in it.

I had failed my mother’s request, I realized. And maybe in some strange way, I felt I deserved to be alienated. Giselle would have a perfect family. Father would carry on as a lawyer. And then there would be me.

“All I ask,” I said simply, my eyes and head lowered, “is to be able to choose what school I go to for my secondary education.” I read a great many books; I knew what boarding school was. I had a laptop computer; I could do all the research and applying myself. I just needed permission, and for him to virtually sign a couple of things.

“Any school you want,” he promised. “No matter the cost.”

This in the end was still important. Cost had never been a problem for my father. I felt in a strange way that he was clinging to it.

“I want to go to an art school,” I said. “Like Mother always wanted to.”

He looked up sharply. “That’s -!”

“Completely useless. I know. You told Mother and that’s why she didn’t go. But she always regretted that she didn’t go, and just in case I’m like Mother I don’t want to regret anything,” I said, too honest because I was only eleven years old.

I didn’t want to smoke a lot and die of lung cancer, like my Mother. But, I had realized, more than anything, I did not want to end up cold and rich like my Father either.

Father had nothing to say to me after that. He let out a great gust of a sigh and sat back, defeated. “... Okay, Annelise,” he said. “You win. Go ahead and find somewhere. Apply.”

Deep down I was angry, but I felt I had no right to be. So I passively accepted my fate.

-

The school I chose after much online research was called Enterprise School for the Arts. There were lots of photos on the website of big old fashioned stone Gothic buildings. It was downtown right in the middle of a big, artsy city, far away from home and all its tragedy, and was said to be “unusual in its private boarding school curriculum.” It was also expensive - big money types congregated inside it.

There were images of the dorm rooms: four posters hung with silks, digital images of underwater sea creatures and windy green wild mountains moving across the walls mingled with soothing water and wind sounds, tapestries hung on the walls, two desks and wardrobes, chairs carved black leather with soft blue tufts and elegant. Foot warmers were said to be provided for cold nights, and windows showed the campus. Gothic architecture flared across the inside images.

I used a search engine on my computer to type in “how to fill out a school application” and applied for the school myself. My father had by this point completely stopped being a parental figure. I called my elementary school myself to have my records sent over, and my grades must have been good enough, because I got in.

When I got the acceptance notification, I shrieked, unable to help myself, in a thrill of triumph. I began bouncing up and down on my bed.

I was in. I was in.

Then I had to virtually sign up for classes. At Enterprise, each student chose four general arts, and four specifications in each art. They also chose two electives, and four specializations within those electives. They thus got one art class in each subject per week, devoting the rest of their time to practice. That was three classes per day, with no weekend breaks. The other four classes per day were devoted to regular curriculum subjects, but even then students were allowed surprising leeway in choosing the types of general ed courses that interested them. The general ed courses happened every day, with social studies switching with the general ed elective from day to day.

For my four general arts, I chose art, music, writing, and fashion. 

For my four art specifications, I chose abstract modern painting and collages, angular charcoal drawing, photography, and avant garde installation art. 

For my four music specifications, I chose piano, violin, guitar, and singing.

For my four writing specifications, I chose poetry free-form, personal essays, songwriting, and nonfiction books based on research.

For my four fashion specifications, I chose makeup art, jewelry making and design, vintage and older clothing and design, and avant garde clothing and design.

For my two electives, I chose horror and history, and psychology and life.

For my four psychology and life electives, I chose logotherapy and the psychology of love and happiness, brainwashing and overcoming the darker parts of human mentality, trauma literature, and the chemical science behind brain-based emotions.

For my four horror and history electives, I chose studies of urban exploration, horror in art and writing, the psychological applications and implications of horror, and political awareness as it relates to media bias and fear tactics.

For my general ed courses, I chose the intersection between literature and science (for English), mathematics as it has been used throughout the centuries (for Math), biology as a way of looking toward the future health of earth and its living species (science), the known real life information and actions behind and surrounding famous figures (social studies), and the study of the psychology of brainwashing and emotions in relation to political writings and literature (elective).

I was simply intuitive. I chose based on instinct, not methodical future calculations. Art and the abstract fascinated me, and for me this was all that mattered. These subjects would carry on with me throughout my entire secondary school career.

I stood in the doorway of my father’s dim and dusty study after signing up for classes, rather excited. “I signed up for my courses!” I said, a thrill running through me, giving a rare wide smile.

His back was to me. “Very good.” Stiff and cold. “I will drive you there on the appointed first day, and pay for your education and expenses. You will spend holidays with Wilhelm, Giselle, and their family.”

My heart sank. That, apparently, was that. All of a sudden I wanted to get out of here. Badly.

I wandered out onto the front steps of my home and curled my arms around my knees. I got the sudden, peculiar sensation that I didn’t really belong anywhere at all.


	2. Looking Up

**Chapter Two: Looking Up**

Uncle Wilhelm, Aunt Ava, and their son Derik came on the day I was to leave, to take Giselle away.

Uncle Wilhelm hugged me goodbye, his warm musky scent, like autumn and good food, filling my nostrils as he gave me the big, warm embrace. I hugged him back tightly, eyes burning, feeling comforted and stronger for a moment. “Take courage, Annelise,” he whispered in my ear, his beard tickling the side of my face. He was wearing a cloth button-up shirt and in that moment everything about him seemed loving and gentle. 

“I will,” I promised, feeling courage flare within me.

He at last stood back, though I was unwilling to let go, and Aunt Ava, a plain but motherly round woman, stooped with a bun of shining brown hair, came forward to hug me next, very briefly. She smelled clean, like soap and powder. She stood me back to look at me.

“Wherever your future takes you,” she said, “never forget that you have been loved.”

“Thank you, Aunt Ava,” I said, my head swimming, a little overwhelmed by the emotional significance of the moment. I had become suddenly shy.

“Alright, let’s saddle up!” Uncle Wilhelm called out, pushing the rest of Giselle’s suitcases in the trunk of his car and slamming it shut. “Giselle needs her car seat!”

“Wait, where are we going?” Giselle was upset and confused, staring around at everyone. “Why aren’t Annelise and Father coming with us?”

I kneeled down to her level. “You’re going to live with Uncle for a while,” I told her, trying to smile. “But don’t worry. We love you very much, and I’ll see you again.” I couldn’t promise anything for Father. “I am just going away to school for a while, see? To learn things.”

“You should learn things here,” Giselle mandated fiercely.

My heart tore. She wasn’t making this easy. I leaned forward and hugged her, still on my knees, my skirt slid over them between me and the concrete sidewalk in front of our house. (Our old house, now, I realized.)

“Never forget that I love you,” I told her softly. “I think you are like Mother. You have her red hair, and you have her spirit. You don’t understand that now, but remember it, because one day you will.” I stood back and smiled at her, my eyes full. “Okay?” My traitor voice broke a little.

“Are you sad?” Giselle asked, looking up at me. “You’re crying.”

“Big Sister’s not sad!” I insisted cheerfully, standing, the world blurring a bit. I gave a great beam. “Big Sister is very happy that Giselle is going to have such a good time with Uncle Wilhelm! Okay?”

“... Okay,” said Giselle at last, intent and concerned.

Everyone was watching us sadly. Aunt Ava picked Giselle up and carried her to the car seat, Giselle rattling off questions. Derik, a tall, broad-shouldered pale blond boy with a slim middle who played football, slid up solemnly beside me. He was always a very serious boy, but today you would have cut him from stone.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured simply, hands in his pockets. “I’ll look after her.”

I turned to him fiercely. “Promise me one thing, Derik,” I said. “Promise me that no matter what happens to me, you will always protect my sister, look after her and love her as if she were yours. Don’t let anything bad happen to her. Okay?”

He looked sideways at me for a moment. “Okay,” he said simply, nodding. And I relaxed. That was all that needed to be said.

“Remember!” Uncle Wilhelm called just before he got into the driver’s seat. “You’re welcome at our house every single school holiday!”

Uncle and his family loaded into the car, and with one last wave, I watched them drive away. They turned the corner. Now Father just had to drive me to school and the breaking of our family would be complete.

I turned to Father, who had stood paralyzed, staring with silent haunted eyes. “Let’s go,” I said coldly, anger frosting my voice, grabbing my suitcase for myself and dragging it to Father’s car - nicer than Uncle Wilhelm’s, but also emptier.

There was a frigid, awkward silence as we drove for the three stifling, torturous hours to the downtown of that big artsy city. Father stared robotically ahead of himself. I sat in stiff silence, torn between pained awkwardness and an anger that for once in my life would not abate itself. Irrational fury, guilt, and agony stormed within me. I sat rigid and unspeaking.

We drove through the downtown of the city, my new home filled with fantastical buildings and murals and lights crowding from street corner to street corner, covered in colorful people, using the GPS on Father’s car to find the school. We drove up to a magnificent campus full of stone Gothic buildings, finding a road on campus where a bunch of cars were parked in a great line. Parents and students were pulling suitcases out of cars and pulling them toward the building directly ahead labeled Residential.

“Here it is,” said Father simply, and then he just sat there.

At last, my fury boiled over. I am sorry to say it, but these are the last words I said to him: “Thank you, Father,” I said frigidly, sarcastically, “for being so brave, parental, and helpful.” I just saw his hurt face before I got out of the car and slammed the door shut.

I think I had surprised both of us. I had always had trouble holding onto anger before, the fury exploding over and then abating, but on that account I don’t think I ever quite forgave my Father. He had made me feel unloved in the most fundamental way and in that moment, eleven and naive and unforgiving, I hated him for it.

I pulled my own suitcase out of the trunk, dumped it on a cart, and wheeled it determinedly toward the doors myself. There was a pause, and then I heard my father pull out, turn around, and drive away. I stopped and couldn’t resist one last glance over my shoulder, watching him fade away into distance and obscurity.

I turned back around toward my future, and wheeled my cart through the residential building doors. 

The residential building was massive carved Gothic stone, several stories, surrounded by green trees and well kept gardens, with a magnificent front archway and doors leading through to the inside. Out beyond the campus, cars honked and lights flashed, the major downtown area bustling and thriving, street artists playing to the passing people - but here there were beautiful gardens and stone architecture and an almost holy hush, as I looked out across the vast campus with its winding paved roads.

I pushed my cart inside and found what I would discover was typical for Enterprise buildings - a great arched stone ceiling, a marbled floor, and high windows that let light flood in. I had entered what seemed to be a common room, covered in elegant furniture, little tables, and leather armchairs, with an unlit fireplace. I rolled up to the desk labeled Student Help. That was where everyone seemed to be going.

“Annelise Otto?” I told the older ponytailed girl at the desk. Her name tag said Maria.

She clicked through her computer and found my name. “Ah! There you are!” she said cheerfully, and I gave a shy, warm smile in return. She paged through a file, and handed my a class schedule and a key card.

“You’re on the third floor,” she said, “room 318. Welcome to Enterprise!”

I pushed my cart up to the gleaming metallic elevator that everyone seemed to be congregating around. Everyone stared at me, the girl with no parent. I retreated inside myself, face becoming emotionless, hiding behind my short hair and secretly embarrassed.

I pushed myself in, jostling with a bunch of other families, and rode the elevator upwards until we got to the third floor. The doors opened, a cool silvery automated voice chiming, “Third Floor.”

“That’s me!” I shouted, attempting to push my tiny way out into the corridor.

I walked down the carpeted hallway, looking for 318. I found it, slid in the key card. The door buzzed and unlocked. I pushed my way into my dormitory, struggling with the cart, and found my roommate already there with a woman who had to be her mother.

“Oh, hi! You’re the roommate! I’m Abigail!” She ran up and stuck out her hand, grinning openly. She had red hair, not auburn like my mother’s or Giselle’s but a fiery color, with shots of orange and gold in it. She was thin and cheerful and covered in freckles. “Abigail McFee.”

I shook her hand. “An Irish name. Mine is German, Annelise Otto. I guess we can’t be friends.” My voice was soft. I smiled uneasily, and she and her mother both laughed.

“America, the wonderful land of immigrants,” said her mother warmly. “Are you not here with family?” She looked concerned.

“No, ma’am,” I admitted quietly, embarrassed. I offered no further information.

They paused in surprise, and then looked pitying. It was horrible. “Well, not to worry,” said her mother, “we’ll set you right up.”

“Oh, Mrs McFee - you don’t have to -” I began awkwardly.

“I am well aware of that,” said Mrs McFee, who would later turn out to be easily irritated. “It’s not like I’m doing it because I feel I have to. Start setting up!” I jumped, and then made hurriedly to comply.

The dormitories were as they had been in the photographs: two four poster beds with embroidered silk hangings, two desks, two wardrobes. The chairs were elegant, carved black leather with soft blue tufts. Windows by the desks, which were at the heads of the beds, showed off a view of campus, more quiet greenery and magnificent Gothic architecture. The wardrobes were at the ends of the beds. Footwarmers, sure enough, had been placed at the end of each bed.

I was impressed by the digital photos on the walls, which really were moving mirages of underwater sea creatures and windy green wild mountains. Abigail saw me admiring. “Look. Push the button on the mirage next to your bed.”

We both pressed the button next to our bed, and lapping underwater sound and soft whistling wind, repetitive and soothing, made themselves known throughout the room from tiny speakers in the corners. “Wow…” I whispered, fingering the embroidered school tapestries hung next to each digital image.

I set my class schedule paper on the desk beside my bed, and began setting up. From the doorway, I was on the right side of the dorm room.

“Unless we ask for a change, we’ll be roommates our entire time at Enterprise!” Abigail called backwards to me. “All the way until we’re eighteen! So we’d better like each other." She grinned over at me pulling stuffed animals out of a pink overnight bag.

“Indeed,” I said, dryly amused, smiling.

Then suddenly, she brightened. “Oh!” She pulled out a tiny coffee maker and set it proudly on the desk. “I’m a total coffee addict! Do you drink coffee?” She was earnest and excited.

“No,” I admitted uneasily, afraid of offending her.

Mrs McFee chuckled. “Well, you will by the time Abigail’s through with you,” she muttered, unpacking herself. Mrs McFee encouraged individualism.

Abigail gasped in delight, stars in her eyes. “Oh, wait till you try it, it’s the best drink in the world!” Abigail was easy to like, affectionate and excitable about everything, an easy grin on her face, always up for an adventure.

Mrs McFee, Abigail, and I got everything set up in our room. I had brought my ratty old childhood teddy bear and countless books, as well as photographs of my mother and my sister. Abigail had brought a fearsome array of pink and stuffed animals, the prized coffee maker, and soccer posters.

I ducked tactfully out of the room while Abigail and Mrs McFee said their tearful goodbyes, checking out the long row of shower stalls on one end of the floor bathroom, the equally long row of toilets and sinks at the other end of the bathroom. There was also a floor common room, and it looked much like the ground floor common room did, except a television had replaced the magnificent fireplace.

I ducked back into the room to find Abigail alone and suspiciously red-eyed. But she had a bright smile for me. “Hey,” she said, “dinner is scheduled soon. It says so on our class schedules. Want to grab a bite to eat?”

Naturally shy, I’d been terrified by the idea of making no friends and I smiled in relief. “That sounds great,” I said, quiet but warm.

We rode the elevator down to the ground floor and ventured with maps out onto campus. The Student Building was right nearby the Residence Halls, and we entered that, past the second magnificent fireplace I’d seen, heading up the sweeping stone staircase and into a little place decorated like an elegant Parisian cafe, complete with tiny tables and romantic sayings along the walls.

Food was all covered in our tuition, so we ordered and sat down at a corner booth, waiting for our food to be delivered. “This is ritzy,” I said, impressed, taking it all in.

“Yeah, it’s supposed to be some super impressive school that’s really hard to get into,” said Abigail, shrugging and waving a hand as if this was of no significance. “I wonder what classes we’ll have together. I mostly focused on digital art and film, especially documentary film.”

We checked our schedules, comparing. We discovered we had angular charcoal drawing, photography, several horror and history classes, the intersection between science and literature, and the psychology of brainwashing and emotions in relation to political writings and literature - all in common. 

“Wow, you picked lots of interesting ones!” said Abigail in fascination, looking over my list. “Music, writing, fashion, art, horror and history, psychology and life. And your general ed looks fascinating too. You’ll have so many cool classes this semester!”

I smiled tiredly. “It’ll be nice, knowing one person,” I admitted. 

“You’re telling me,” said Abigail with feel. “And we’ll get to go on urban explorations together! Isn’t that cool?! Exploring creepy old abandoned hospitals and asylums with face masks and cameras… Ah, I’m so excited!”

I decided I liked Abigail. Everything seemed much less cold and scary with her around.

“So what do you think of our fellow students?” I asked. We looked nervously around at everyone.

“They seem okay,” said Abigail softly. “Though the older students are a little intimidating. I get the suspicious feeling I’ll spend several days -”

“Trying to stay out of everybody’s way.” I nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“See that older guy over there? Isn’t he so cute?” I looked around - and he was, I had to admit, tall, muscular, and dark-haired. He glanced our way. Abigail and I gasped and looked away, blushing - we grinned at each other and giggled madly.

We spent the rest of the evening snickering at all the supposedly “cool” hipster girls with black shaded glasses we could see wandering moodily and poetically on campus. Friendship, I discovered, was a process of finding someone with whom you could laugh at things together.

As I walked back to our dormitory to take a shower in my bathrobe and head for bed, Abigail chattering on beside me, I reflected in relief that things were looking up. I had lots of interesting classes to go to, a warmer and friendlier house with my sister to visit on holidays, and I was pretty sure I had just made my first friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friendly hint - feel free to get attached to this world and these characters, and to the FMA cast both. I’m a sucker for all-around happy endings. ;)


End file.
